Joe Haldeman: Camouflage

They watched him go and Russell laughed quietly. “They’re funny. Casual about nudity but conservative about clothing.”

She nodded. “I’ll never understand religion. Or fashion, for that matter.” She set the bowl on the table and fished through the grocery bag for a couple of plastic forks. “Appetizer?”

“Thanks. Let me put on the dogs first.” He smoothed the white pile of coals with a stick and got four hot dogs from the cooler.

The fish was cold and firm and spicy. “I could get used to this,” the changeling said. “How long have you lived here?”

“Got here last summer, when I came out with Jack Halliburton to set up the lab.” He arranged the hot dogs in a precise row. “I commuted for a couple of months, finishing up old business in Baja. Pretty much stuck here since the lab was finished and the artifact was in place.”

“You don’t like it?”

“As a place it’s okay. Vacation spot. Hard to do science here, though.” He sat down next to her and speared a piece of oka. “Even with modern communications, virtual conference room and all, it’s really isolated. You can break a fifty-cent part and be shut down for two days, waiting for the plane. And you miss … it sounds snobbish, it is snobbish, but I miss the company of like-minded people, people you don’t work with—scientists, artists, whatever.”

“I would have taken you for a loner.”

“Well, I am, or was. The place in Baja was miles from nowhere, and that’s one reason I leased it. But I could be in L.A. in an hour, and had an apartment just off the UCLA campus.”

“Where you seduced college girls. I know your type.”

He laughed and blushed. “Back when I had hair.” He got up to check the dogs. “I do miss the college-town atmosphere. Bookstores, coffeeshops, bars. The libraries on campus. The girls on campus.”

“It’s a nice campus. I stayed there for two weeks, diving in summer school.”

“Where?”

“A dorm.” The changeling knew where Jimmy Coleridge’s students stayed now. Where would it have been eleven years ago? “Maybe Con-way? Conroy.”

“Oh yeah. That’s close to where I stay.” He used tongs to rotate the hot dogs 180 degrees, then went to the cooler. “Beer? Or a glass of wine.”

“You have wine in there?”

“No, back in the fridge. Only take a minute.”

“That would be good. I’m not much of a beer drinker. Maybe when the dogs are done.”

“Keep an eye on ’em.” He jogged away.

The changeling considered its position. This was a cusp. If it began a love affair with Russ—or restarted one—it would probably kill its chances for the job. But the job was only a stepping stone to get close to the artifact. Maybe Russ’s lover would have a better shot at that than the receptionist.

Why did it feel this drive to be in the physical presence of the thing? It had seen all the pictures, studied the data, read people’s frustrated inconclusions.

It remembered the feeling when it swam from Bataan to California. The inchoate feeling, the hesitation, when it passed over the Tonga Trench.

It felt that now, more strongly than ever. Something was taking form.

Russell came back with two long-stemmed glasses of white wine, already misted with humidity. “Drink it while it’s cold,” he said, handing one to her, and drank off a third of his in a gulp. “Ready in a minute.” He gave the hot dogs a quarter turn.

“So why didn’t you just move the thing to Baja? Why start from scratch here?”

“I wish.” He stared at the grill. “Partly the difficulty of moving the damned thing. Mostly political, though. Mexico’s too close to the United States, not just in miles, but politically and economically. Jack didn’t want Uncle Sam breathing down our neck. Mexican soldiers knocking on our door. Down our door.”

“They could do that?”

“Sure they could. Threat to hemisphere security.” He split two buns and set them on the grill. “Independent Samoa really is independent. And stable. Tonga was closer to the artifact’s original position, but we didn’t want to deal with the politics there.

“Jack studied surveys of the Samoan Islands, and wound up here by a process of elimination.”

“The first factor being ‘Is there a town?’ ”

He nodded. “They call it the only city in Samoa, but as you know, it’s not exactly Hong Kong. It’s really just a bunch of towns crowded together, but it does have a pharmacy, hardware store, and so forth.” He gestured toward the main building. “And this patch of land: it was undeveloped, privately owned, and on the water. Jack got in touch with the matai of the family that owned it and arranged to lease it. He even became a Samoan citizen.”

“Did he join the family, the aiga?”

“No, although he didn’t rule out the possibility. Technically, he’d have to share all his wealth with the family.” He raised an eyebrow. “That’s not in his nature.”

“You’ve known him a long time?”

“No. Not until … he got in touch with me about the submarine disaster that led to our finding the artifact.” The changeling knew, as Rae, that there was something secret going on there. Maybe it could tease the truth out of him in this incarnation.

“We never would have met, in the normal course of things. He was born into money, but chose a military career. I’m pretty far from either of those.” He inspected the hot dogs. “These two are done.” She held out paper plates and he installed buns and dogs on them, then repositioned the remaining two according to some arcane thermodynamic principle, and split two more buns to toast.

They silently went about the business of mustard and ketchup and relish, all out of small squeeze packets that Russell had liberated from various airports.

The changeling took a bite. “Good.” Bland, actually.

Russell shrugged. “Sometimes I’d kill for some plain American sidewalk vendor food. Bacteria and all.”

“You made money, though. As opposed to being born with it. You didn’t raise the Titanic with spare change.”

He shook his head, chewing. “Always use other people’s money. Sometimes I feel more like a pitchman than an engineer.” He paused to squirt another envelope of mustard into the bun. “Jack thinks, or claims to think, that there’s a huge fortune in this. Maybe someday, but probably not for him. He’s got a zillion eurobucks to earn back—and he’s old.”

“How about you?”

“I’m not so old.”

“I mean money. Do you expect to make a fortune yourself?”

“No; hell, no. I’m in it for the game.”

“That’s what I thought. Hoped.”

“Biggest thing in the twenty-first century. Maybe the biggest thing, all the way back.” He stared at the containment building. “Even if it’s not from another world. That would mean that our view of reality, our science, is wrong. Not just incomplete, but wrong.”

“Isn’t that true, no matter where it comes from?”

“In a way, no. Last century, a guy pointed out that a sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic…”

Arthur C. Clarke, the changeling didn’t say. It had met him at an Apollo launch in the 1970s.

“And that gives us an out. Our science could still be a subset of theirs. Like going back to Newton and showing him a hologram.”

He was so absorbed in his explanation he wasn’t aware of the man walking quietly up behind him. His shadow fell over him and he jumped, startled. “Jack!”

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”

“This is Sharon Valida. Jack Halliburton.”

The changeling extended its hand. “We’ve met, briefly. I work at the Pacific Commercial Bank.”